Day 8........Quesnel to Smithers

Another travelling day of six hours straight. Woke up in dense fog, had breakfast, bought some birch syrup at the local home industry shop and cruise controlled through Stoner, Prince George, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Houston and then to Smithers. 

The landscape is just trees and lakes forever. Here and there are very neat farms with hay rolled for the Winter. We wondered as we went along what people do in these remote places and came to the conclusion not very much. It's very important to shop with a detailed list because if you forget the toilet paper or the coffee life will get pretty rough. What is interesting is to see the cycle of nature replacing the pine trees with deciduous forest ........birch and poplar move in pretty fast as the pine beetle kills off the pines relentlessly. This forest death is the boreal forest's equivalent of the Amazon Rainforest destruction, it's like having lung cancer for the planet.

The pine beetle has infested these older forests for a number of reasons. They usually only attack trees older than 80 years weeding them out for young growth but a combination of fire fighting and dryer and warmer years for the last decade has lead to the normal Winter die off of the larva to jump from 90% to only 10%.This coupled with the fact that most of the trees are over 90 years old has lead to this devastation.

So here we are in Smithers. The Bulkley Valley in which Smithers is located was first inhabited by the Wet'suwet'en, an indigenou Carrier people whose native tongue is of the Athabaskan language family. This group are very different to the Coast Salish natives and are from Parie origin.

Smithers was founded in 1913 as the headquarters of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Today it's population is about 5500 who like to be known as Smithereens. These folk are very eco minded and extremely friendly and helpful. The town has an old core of quaint Western style buildings and an overlying Alpine feeling. Swiss Apenhorns feature on statues around town. Right above town is a ski mountain and I could imagine the ski vibe here in Winter.

So at this stage Mum is outdoing me since I am now on a course of antibiotics and my cold has just broken allowing me to cough up my lungs freely instead of just feel them dissolving in my chest. This had better clear because tomorrow we are off to Stewart to see the bears and glaciers. If the accomodation is good I think we will stay for three days and have a holiday before setting off again.